"In September 2016 I was fortunate enough to attend an Applied
Plant Taxonomy, Identification and Field Survey Skills Course run by the Royal
Botanic Gardens, Kew. I have just started a PhD at Loughborough University,
where I will be studying the impacts of climate change and eutrophication on coastal
sand dunes.

This course was therefore a great opportunity for me to develop my
plant identification and field skills, which I had previously learnt through
volunteering with the BSBI this year.

The course lasted for two weeks and predominantly focused on
learning how to identify plants. We were
taught how to recognise the key features of several orders and families using
dried and live specimens, in an attempt to get out of our old bad habits, such
as assuming a plant’s identity because “it looks like that!”.

Living Specimens of theFamily CompositaeImage: Ciara Sugrue

This course was extremely helpful because we
were exposed to both temperate and tropical plant specimens and learnt to
identify them using a hand held lens, books and notes that were provided.

Part of the course focused on giving us introductory
lectures into plant systematics, nomenclature and taxonomy. I found these
lectures particularly interesting because they explained why we classify plants
and animals (systematics), the rules and the process of how to name new species
(nomenclature), and how names explain the relationship between plants based on
botanist opinions (taxonomy). I learnt that these are the key building blocks
for helping to group species by characteristics which allow us to identify
plants.

The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is well known for its large
and lavish gardens of tropical and temperate plants, as well as its herbarium
containing over 7 million dried plant specimens. However, Kew is also an
established scientific institute playing an important role in plant research
and conservation.

We had lectures highlighting Kew's role in international
policy work such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species
(CITES) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the Nagoya
Protocol. CITES helps conserve plants threatened by international trade, and
the Nagoya Protocol promotes the fair and equitable sharing of benefits derived
from genetic resources and their utilisation.

These policies emphasised the
importance of legal plant collection. Additionally, we learned about the
International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, this provides the
extinction risk of species, which can then assist with prioritising
conservation efforts.

An important part of undertaking vegetation surveys is not
only learning how to identify plants correctly but also ensuring that the surveys
and data recording is completed efficiently. We were taught a variety of skills,
including how to survey in different habitats, how to use a GPS navigators and
how to preserve specimens in the field. At the end of the two weeks we had a
day trip to Richmond Park. It was a great day out where we were able to put
into practice the skills we had learnt during the course at Kew".

Many thanks to Ciara for telling us more about this course. Check out the list of courses for botanists on our Training page.